A bit of everything

During last year I joined Traci Bautista's online classes and found them extremely inspiring, especially her 'Discovering You' course, all about starting your own business and marketing yourself. Traci is now running an Art Journaling Daily event on her blog where everyday you spend 5-20 minutes journaling. I make lots of journals but haven't made one for myself in a long time. Now I'm working full time at my art I decided now was as good a time as any to start. My journal is very basic as you can see, the only art is on the cover, this is going to be a real challenge as I always start out with decorated papers. I'll be posting the progress along the way. Visit Traci's site, you might like to join the event too.

The cover.

The inside cover.

All of the pristine white pages.

Art Journaling Daily link

I received this magnificent piece of equipment for Christmas from my husband. I've been working on two journals, one a commission and the other a secret for the time being, this little (or should I say not so little) piece of machinery is helping me add some wonderful embellishments to the pages. I've been using a hand felting embellisher for some time now, but this one is the way to go, it saves so much time and embellishes pretty much anything that stands still long enough for me to get it under the needles.

This is my new embellisher.

I've still managed to find a little time to do some hand work on my gelatine printed quilt. I love the fact that this was just a pile of plain calico before I started printing. It's a lovely feeling to have created something from your own fabric, making it totally unique. I'm adding circles of varying sizes, these are cut from some very old pure linen (the dark blue) and raw silk (the khaki green) pants I had many years ago adding to the 'aged' look.

The buttons are very old linen ones and the label is from a brand of 'hippy' clothing I used to wear some years ago, although I still have the clothes and they do make an appearance on occasions.

 These circles will all be linked eventually.

I'm never one to pass something by if I think I can use it to create texture, and these little bamboo goodies jumped out at me today and said 'take me home'. The other end is actually tongs but I'll be using this end to decorate paper and fabric, at 3 for a dollar I couldn't resist them.

Finally I regularly visit blogs and gain so much inspiration along the way, and every so often a technique comes along that knocks your socks off. Susan Lenz has a textile technique that does just that. I did a textile swap with her some years ago now and was most impressed with her piece but what Susan's doing now is amazing and if you go back through her blog files she actually explains how she does it, a very talented, generous lady.